


The Appetites He Feeds

by Vitreous_Humor



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Biting, Hair-pulling, M/M, Rough praise kink, Whipping, book burning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 10:59:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19271905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vitreous_Humor/pseuds/Vitreous_Humor
Summary: Look, angels haveneeds, all right? Or at least, one angel does. Crowley can't get his way all the time, and it's probably good for him. Probably.





	The Appetites He Feeds

Crowley flinched when the angel took his hand, looking him earnestly in the eye. That meant that he was serious and that Crowley couldn't get out of it with a joke or an offer of drinks or a sudden urgent trip to the other side of the planet.

That meant that Crowley would have to say yes or no like an adult, and where was the fun in _that_?

“It is what I want,” Aziraphale said calmly. “It is something that I have wanted for a very long time.”

“And we do what I want all the time, is that it?”

Aziraphale looked slightly offended, but he didn't let go of Crowley's hand.

“Of course we do what you want all the time. I love doing what you want. This isn't a transaction or a trade, Crowley. Never that. It is simply something that I want, that I want you to give to me.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Aziraphale that he couldn't. If he said that, he knew that Aziraphale would fold that desire up like a tablecloth, tucking it away underneath his seldom-used magic supplies and never bring it out to air again. That was who Aziraphale was.

However.

It wasn't _can't,_ it was _won't._

And it wasn't even _won't_ or _I don't want to,_ it was...

He made a growling noise, taking his hand from Aziraphale's and flopping face-down over Aziraphale's lap. It was easier not to look at the angel at moments like this.

Crowley could feel Aziraphale's eyes on the back of his head, and then strong fingers came down to knead the taut muscles at his neck and his shoulders. He let himself relax into it, let his eyes drift half-shut. His tongue flickered out, tasting for any kind of threat, but of course there was none. There was only his own dry leaf scent and Aziraphale's cologne, the safest thing in the world.

“I don't know if I can,” he muttered.

Aziraphale made a considering noise. Most angels didn't dance, but they all sang, and there was a musicality to the thrumming noise Aziraphale made when he was deep in thought. Somewhere between fluorescent lights and an out-of-tune theremin, maybe.

“Well, what would make it easier?”

Crowley turned the question over in his head like an unexploded incendiary device.

“It might take away all the fun for you,” Crowley admitted. “I know you've pictured some sweet scene by the fire or tucked in bed or-”

“Well, no.”

“Eh?”

Aziraphale knit his fingertips into the back of Crowley's neck and worked them up through his scalp. The pleasure sunk down into Crowley's skull, and he could barely stop from whimpering. Utterly disgraceful, really, but there was no one but Aziraphale to see.

“I said no. I hadn't pictured anything like that. Didn't picture much of anything at all, really. I was rather more focused on-”

“Yes, I know what you were focused on,” Crowley said hastily. “But nothing else?”

“Not really. The rest doesn't matter much to me.”

Crowley twisted up until he was seated on Aziraphale's lap, searching the angel's eyes for a falsehood he knew he wouldn't find. Aziraphale was not above telling lies, big or small, but there was no hint of a lie in him now.

“So you don't care what else is going on so long as you get your way?” It came out slightly accusatory, and Aziraphale laughed. He reached out one finger to adjust Crowley's crooked collar.

“I am rather a simple creature, I am afraid. I know what I want-”

“And you want me to-”

It was extraordinary, like watching the dark and fast-moving clouds that would turn a picnic into a Flood. Aziraphale's eyes got a steely glint to the blue, and he stroked his hand down Crowley's chest. His motion was idle, more straightening the fabric than caressing the flesh underneath and somehow all the more possessive because of it.

“To take it. Yes.”

His tone set a shudder through Crowley's body, and he pressed himself a little closer to Aziraphale's bulk, hands twisting in his lap like a knot of snakes.

“All right,” he said, heat coming up on his face. “That's something I can work with.”

***

He was wrong, oh blessings on every single thing on the bloody planet, he had been _wrong._ There was nothing to work with here, nothing at all, not when Aziraphale stood behind still drawing the knotted length of the short whip through his hands. No, it was all he could do to hold on. The pain from the lash was trying to consume him, his fingers dug chips out of the wall, but as Aziraphale had wanted all along, he was listening.

“You have no idea how very much I love you, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, his voice absolutely _soft_ with tenderness. “You think you do and you think it is bounded in some way by your body or your mind or your soul. No, darling, what I feel for you is so much greater. It's as wide as the far reach of the world, so deep you could fall into it and never come out again...”

Crowley shuddered with a pain of a different kind then, because that sweetness was almost scalding. It wouldn't hurt so much if he was a proper demon. If he were a proper demon, he would have considered it a temptation well-carried out, but he wasn't. He wasn't a proper demon, he certainly wasn't a proper _angel_ -

“Dear, you're not listening,” Aziraphale said mildly, and the whip uncoiled to leave a scorpion bite on his shoulder. There was a moment of frigid numbness, and then the pain opened up like an origami crane, hot and cruel and precise. Crowley panted hard, trying to cool the burn by taking in great deep breaths of cold air. It almost worked, almost seemed to make the pain fade, before the whip flicked out again, this time catching somewhere midway down his back.

He couldn't stop himself from howling that time, cringing away from the pain of it and leaving another scrape on the wall in front of him. Demons liked to boast that nothing had hurt them since the fall, but that was a bloody lie, wasn't it? _This_ hurt. This hurt so badly that tears were falling from his tightly closed eyes, and it almost didn't matter what Aziraphale was saying.

“You are so _good,”_ Aziraphale said, coming a little closer. Crowley was naked, but Aziraphale was still completely clothed, How could the angel wear such prim and _nerdy_ clothing at a time like this? It wasn't to be borne.

“ _So_ good. I found, when I thought about it a little while ago, that I did not need some forbidden apple to tell me what goodness was. It was you. You're the kind of good they never told me about, the kind that sees the need and fills it, that looked at me and told me it was all right when I gave them that sword...”

“It wasn't-”

Crowley's words cut off with a groan as Aziraphale slapped the flat of his palm over the welt he had just left on Crowley's shoulder. The pain was bright and immediate, and Crowley shuddered in the aftermath of it.

“You're meant to be _listening,”_ Aziraphale said, a trifle sternly. “Remember, this is what I want.”

He stepped back, and the cold in the space he left was almost unbearable.

“You are perhaps the greatest good I could ever hope for, Crowley. I hope I prove myself worthy of it.”

Before Crowley could try to take that apart, let it get his teeth him, Aziraphale laid the full lash of the whip across his back. He had been using the tip for fly-killing flicks, but this time, he let Crowley feel the full length, every hard knot in the leather ready to tear at naked skin.

“God _damn_ you,” Crowley cried, because he had to say something. It was deliriously painful even if it pulled back from the bright burn after a count of three. The throbbing afterwards was almost a pleasure because it wasn't the heat of the initial hurt.

“You always _try_ so hard,” Aziraphale continued, as if Crowley hadn't spoken. “You do. Once you decide to do a thing, neither Heaven or Hell could stand in your way. Neither of them deserved you, not if they couldn't see how much you wanted to please them. I do, though. I see how much you want to please me, and it is so beautiful. Better than sunrises after reading all night. Better than finding something brand new in a world we thought we knew inside and out. That's what you feel like to me sometimes, you know. A new world every morning out of something so beloved and familiar.”

He _did_ understand, of course he did, because that was the way he felt about Aziraphale. Every day, there was something new to learn about his angel, but that made _sense._ Aziraphale was blessed, and besides that, so utterly unique in all of the Ineffable Plan. There was nothing like him at all, and-”

“Listen, please. I can tell that your mind is wandering.”

“How?!” The question was so insulted and desperate that Aziraphale paused before striking him again. Instead the angel drifted closer, making that broken theremin sound again. He leaned in close to breathe over the welts he had left earlier, and Crowley couldn't stop him self from shivering at the pleasure of that.

“How do I know that your mind is wandering? A number of ways, I suppose. Your shoulders go up, your eyes go cloudy and inward a bit. It's quite obvious when you are watching for it...”

Crowley shuddered, crowding closer to the wall, and he could somehow hear Aziraphale's smile.

“Oh, darling, did you not know how much time I have spent looking at you? I have been looking at you for thousands of years, and I will never get enough.”

Crowley would have sworn that his mind wasn't wandering that time, but then Aziraphale's fingers went to his side, touching for just a moment before pinching the thin skin over his ribs in a hard grip and twisting. Crowley howled before Aziraphale pulled his hand away.

“I mean, I thought you were beautiful from the first, the very first. All that lovely red hair, and your eyes... I know it is ridiculous for beings like us to be so infatuated with the physical form, but I could never help it when it came to you. And somehow it just got _better and better,_ and if I could explain that, well, I wouldn't be just a principality, I can tell you that. I never get tired of looking at you. For the familiar and the novel, nothing is better. Perhaps some time, I'll put you in a cage, and just spend the next five or six years looking at you...”

The shudder that ran through Crowley's body then had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with that narrow vein of darkness that cut through Aziraphale's words. He had seen it before, off and on, ducking underneath the angel's natural sweetness and kindness only to resurface again, a surprise and and an uncomfortable turn-on.

Aziraphale laughed at himself, as if he were talking about putting ponzu sauce on ice cream; foolish, but still, perhaps...

“Goodness, listen to me... You _are_ listening, aren't you, dear?”

“Yes... yes.”

Aziraphale must have believed him because the broken-theremin sound became something a little more like a purr. The whip was set aside for a moment, and the angel came to press his cheek against the shoulder that was a little less abused, one arm going around Crowley s waist.

“The things I have wanted to do to you. It was actually how I figured that Heaven couldn't read thoughts at all, you know. Because if they had, well. I would have been done for ages ago. As far back as Golgotha, if not before.”

“Fallen?” Crowley managed. Questioning was apparently allowed because Aziraphale cuddled him a little more firmly, making him grunt with pain. The angels' buttons were cold against his back, nothing like the lash's pain, but hardly comfortable. Aziraphale ignored his flinch.

“Or obliterated. You were only asking questions. I was thinking of things... Well. That's not what I want to talk about right now.”

“You've got me here and listening, you might as well talk,” Crowley said hopefully, and Aziraphale laughed, his breath tickling his ear. Then he bit Crowley's neck so hard that he could feel the skin split, so hard that Crowley would have banged his head into the wall if Aziraphale's hand hadn't come up to cushion it.

“Aziraphale... angel...” Crowley moaned when Aziraphale released. The bite radiated heat as if angels were venomous. Aziraphale passed his thumb over it and then pressed down lightly. Even that was enough to make his knees buckle, and he might have fallen altogether if Aziraphale hadn't been there to hold him up.

“No, dear, I can talk about _that_ at any point. You would love that, hearing about all the things I would do to you if Heaven and Hell and humanity never existed and there was only me and only you in a lonely world. And we will do that. Right now, though...”

He leaned up to nuzzle Crowley's ear, whispering into it it like it was a seashell for storing secrets.

“Right now though, I get to talk about how adorable you are, and how you try _so_ hard, and how very precious you are to me. You please me so well, and I've always known it. I could kick myself for letting so much time go past while lying to myself about one thing or another, for thinking I was wrong or that you were teasing me or tempting me or testing me. I have... wasted so much time, and perhaps I had more time than most to waste, but it is no excuse.”

Aziraphale kissed the bite mark and then lapped at it almost primly.

“Thank you for waiting. Thank you for being there. Thank you for wanting me.”

Crowley shuddered, because apparently he couldn't take that either, his angel humble. He'd rather Aziraphale testy, irritable, petty, cranky, anything except _humble_ , it didn't suit him...

“Dear, dear, and there goes your head again.”

That was all the warning he got before Aziraphale grabbed a fistful of his hair, pulling his head to one side so hard his neck creaked. The second bite was, if anything, harder than the first, and Crowley got the breath to scream out loud, hands digging deep into the wall now because it was either that or push Aziraphale away, and he couldn't stand to do that, _never_ could stand to do that.

“Fragile little thing,” Aziraphale... he wouldn't hiss, but it was close. “You're that, too, and do you have any idea how _afraid_ that made me? Reckless, reckless thing. Flouncing around as if you were quite invincible when all that it would take to do you in was a medieval priest and a bucket. It used to drive me to distraction how careless you could be. I swear, I spent most of the 1300s worried to distraction about all those blessed weapons floating around, when it seemed as if everyone had an idea about killing demons.”

He paused.

“Not sorry at all about _those_ book burnings.”

The sheer absurdity of that cut through the pain haze and Crowley twisted his head back to look at Aziraphale in disbelief.

“Wait, no, no way in Satan's wide plain, you _never_...”

Aziraphale waved off that unbelievable fact as if it were a mayfly.

“Oh, I made sure I got my copies secured first. Autographed, too and stashed in a vault in northern Iceland. And it was hardly pleasant. I had a few little moments of doubt, let me tell you. But in the end, it was worth it.”

He ran his hand down Crowley's lacerated back, patting twice and then slapping the worst of the welts. Crowley whimpered sagging against the wall, but listening again.

“Because Crowley, what do you think I _wouldn't_ do for you? I'm not entirely sure myself. I suppose someday we'll find out, but I don't think so. Because I suspect we are just going to go on like this, loving each other, sometimes closer and sometimes farther apart, but present and accounted for, always. And I am never, ever, _ever_ going to stop telling you that I love you, and that I adore you, and that you are beautiful. I will find other ways to do it, if you don't like to hear it. It doesn't always have to be like this, but Crowley?”

Crowley's eyes were shut tight, he was crying, but he was listening. His entire body felt as if he had been dragged to Hell and back, but he was listening to everything the angel had to say, letting the words sink into him like rain into land broken up by an iron harrow. Satan only knew what in the world would grow, but the words were there, in him, and he knew with desperation and wonder that he would never get them out.

“Crowley, if you need it to be like this every time? It _will be.”_

_***_

It was still dark when Crowley woke up, curled against Aziraphale's hip in the bed they didn't usually have much use for. A single lamp gave Aziraphale enough light to read, but with his free hand, he stroked Crowley's unblemished shoulder.

 _Miracle,_ Crowley thought, his head still hazy. Aziraphale must have taken care of that for him after he finally collapsed, exhausted from crying so hard and badly in need of some time to simply be nothing more than a sodden little mess hidden under the covers. He vaguely remembered taking some tea from the angel, laced with something that made his mouth burn and then resulted in a pleasant buzz. He remembered how silent Aziraphale had been, as if aware that any other word from him, any comfort, any kind of consideration, might be too much.

“So,” he said, his voice a dry croak. He coughed and tried it again. “So. Falling.”

Aziraphale looked at him, his eyes troubled.

“Oh my dear, did something we do remind you-?”

No, if anything, it had reminded him of what had come before that particular dive, but he wasn't prepared to tell Aziraphale that just yet. If ever.

“No, Satan, no. Not _mine_.”

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows in polite confusion. Crowley sought for words, taking his angel's hand. He didn't want Aziraphale to take it the wrong way, as if there were a right way to take such a question.

“Are we sure that, at some point, you know, some time, some place, in the past six thousand years, you never just... stumbled? I mean, sauntering doesn't feel like exactly... your _style,_ but you know. Stumbling. Tripping. Misplacing a step. Something like that?”

Aziraphale laughed, leaning over to plant a comfortable kiss right in the corner of Crowley's mouth, as if tucking it away for him to have for later. It made Crowley lose the last bit of tension from their scene. Of course he was being ridiculous.

“Oh my dear,” Aziraphale smiled, all soft fluff and roundness and home. “Does it matter?”

The implications of that spun in his mind like a top throwing out caltrops.

“No,” Crowley admitted, because it was true. It didn't matter, possibly had never mattered from the beginning.

“Get some sleep, dear,” Aziraphale said, going back to his book. “You have had a trying evening.”

He had, and he settled back down into his blanket-and-angel nest gratefully, warmer and so well-loved he could just barely stand it.

  
  


 


End file.
